640 

rs 

>py 1 



IN HELL— SHUT IN— 

At the Outbreak of the Great War, 19 14 



IN HELL— SHUT IN — 

At the Outbreak of the Great War, 1914 



Ts 



The following pages are based upon notes taken on the 
spot, and express the feelings and emotions of the writer at 
the time. 



/ 



COPYRIGHTED, 1015 

By GEORGE B. THAYER 

West Hai"tfoi"d, Conn. 

W -I S9I5 " 

C)CI,A400404 



Late Saturday afternoon, August 1, 1914, the day the 
world blew up, I came down from a climb up the side of the 
valley opposite Mt. Blanc to the hotel at Chamonix when a 
German boy of fifteen, who, with his parents, had been stop- 
ping at the same hotel, said to me somewhat excitedly : 

"The French army has begun to mobilize and we have 
been ordered to leave France within twenty-four hours." 

This news seemed to concern me personally only to the 
extent of losing the assistance and companionship of this bright 
German lad. He had acted as interpreter for me the day be- 
fore when I first reached Chamonix ; had told me, after in- 
quiring of the French proprietor, what the rates at the hotel 
were and, what was of far more importance to me, had kept 
me posted when breakfast, dinner and supper were ready. I 
was sorry to have him go. But as for the rest of the news, if 
the French army wanted to mobilize it could go ahead and 
mobilize. I was not going to stop it. The mobilization of 
any army was a matter that did not concern me in the least, 
so Ithen thought, for I was at peace with every nation and 
just then bent on only one thing in this world — a walking 
trip through the Swiss and Austrian Alps and a sail, in the fall, 
from Trieste, in Austria, over to Egypt and the Holy Land. 
Any interference by the mobilization of an army or two 
with that plan did not then occur to me as even possible. The 
only matter of doubt was whether a young fellow of three 
score years and more could do such a thing, could walk through 
such a mountainous country. But men older than I am have 
done such things, even in altitudes higher than the Alps. 
Enoch, for instance, after he was sixty-five, walked with God 
for three hundred years. That was going some. But I never 
plan such trips, partly because, heretofore, unlike Enoch, I 
have had to go alone. Besides, Enoch, walking in a state of 
eternal bliss, was never bothered with blisters, whereas, my 
walking, ha^'ing hitherto been in the United States, had raised 
Idisters eternally. 

So I left the United States on the S. S. Columbia June 
13th and, to get my feet and legs in condition, stopped off at 
Moville and began a week's walking trip through Ulster 
County, in the north of Ireland. 

"Yes, I am sure the Lord was watching over us that 
night," said a good woman to me while discussing, in her 
home near Larne, the recent successful gun-running in which 



a shipload of arms and ammunition was transported into the 
country towns, secretly and systematically, by means of auto- 
mobiles. '*Yes, I know the Lord must have watched over us, 
for, of all the three hundred and sixty-three automobiles we 
used that night only one tire busted." 

A mere coincidence, but the morning the Crown Prince of 
Austria left Vienna for Bosnia on his fatal journey, Tuesday, 
June 33rd, I wrote home: 

"I am not having as much fun over here as some of you 
are down in Mexico, that is, not yet. Over here the killing 
has not begun yet." 

The next Sunday afternoon, just as I had finished this 
preliminary walk of one hundred miles or so and was resting 
on a high cliff overlooking the harbor of Belfast, the killing 
began. The Crown Prince was assassinated at Sarajevo, the 
capital of Bosnia. 

Another week leisurely roaming through the lake districts 
of England and a third around Snowdon, in the north of 
Wales, made me satisfied to take the train for London and, 
in a few days, cross over to Paris. 

When, on the night of Monday, July 2Tth, the war fever 
stirred the city and crowds paraded the streets and passed 
close under my windows, then I was only interested, not con- 
cerned. Even the next day, when Austria declared war against 
Servia, I looked upon the matter merely as a local disturbance. 
No falling barometer in the atmosphere of European peace 
bothered me. However, on Wednesday, July 29th, the day 
I left Paris by train for Geneva, I find I made a brief note in 
my diary of the fact that troops were on guard at nearly all 
the railroad bridges and tunnels. This ordinary guard duty, 
which every soldier has to perform, was, I thought, being 
applied to the localities mentioned merely as a matter of form, 
an object lesson. How little I realized the true meaning and 
value of the precautionary measures being taken, which I 
noticed from the car window. A stick of dynamite fired under 
the pier of a railroad bridge or in a dirt tunnel would have de- 
layed mobilization seriously. But nothing of this nature 
entered my thoughts and soon the whole matter passed out 
of my mind, out of my mind so completely that when the 
German lad told me of the French mobilization I did not con- 
nect it with the presence of the troops along the lines of the 
railroads. Unknown to me for days after, but as a matter 
of fact, that Saturday afternoon, about half past three, while I 
was high up the side of the valley, looking across at the 
dazzling mass of snow on Mt. Blanc, Germany declared war 
against Russia and against France. 

But I, as free of forebodings as a child, or perhaps, to put 
it more accurately, as careless of consequences as a confirmed 
tramp, kept on climbing. Sunday morning, with a copy of the 



Daily Mail of August 1st in my pocket, I went up the side of 
the mountain again two or three thousand feet, sat down on 
a bench where there was a wide view up and down the valley 
and read. The possibilities of a European war were hinted at, 
but no one took thought of such a possibility. Thousands of 
tourists on pleasure bent, like myself, continued bent. No one 
straightened up. Thomas Cook & Sons continued to arrange 
personally conducted tours to all parts of Europe and adver- 
tised the fact. This and much more I read in the Daily Mail 
of the day before. Returning to the hotel later I found the 
proprietor had been called to the colors and would close the 
hotel the next morning. 

To tell the proprietor and his hustling wife that I was 
sorry for them, I could not — that is, in the language which they 
could understand and could speak, but I did the b;st I could. 
I took out my handkerchief and wiped my eyes and shook 
them both by the hand. The tears, genuine ones, in their 
eyes told me we understood each other. My own imaginary 
tears were soon dry. Again, my personal comfort seemed 
concerned, in these changed conditions, only to the extent ^ 
of moving my little baggage to another hotel. I did not worry. 

Good fortune had followed me all the days of my happy 
life at Chamonix. One afternoon I busied myself, a few 
hundred feet up the west side of the valley, in the shade of the 
pine trees, watching the cog-wheel trains opposite go up and 
down the Montenvert railroad. Later, I climbed farther up, 
to Flegere, 6,000 feet, where I met an enthusiastic party of 
English tourists, like myself, unconscious of the coming con- 
vulsion. On another trip I reached Planpraz, 6,700 feet, di- 
rectly opposite Mt. Blanc, where, even with my small glasses, 
I could easily trace the trail made since the last storm by a 
party of climbers, in the snow, almost to the top. Thus I went 
up unto the hills for strength and got it, in the muscles of my 
legs, every time. Up there the only sound was the distant 
thunder of falling snow, sliding down the sides of Mt. Blanc, 
seemingly only five or six miles away, directly across the 
valley. No place could have been more quiet and peaceful, 
up there alone. Below, when I returned to the hotel, the 
noise of a drum and the tread of many men in uniform, hurry- 
ing about, grated on my nerves. This was Sunday. 

When Monday morning came, after a record of three clear 
days and with a sky of wonderfully deep blue, I did not look 
up another hotel, but decided to start on over into Switzerland 
along the route I had originally mapped out. The cobbler 
with whom I had left my extra pair of Boy Scout shoes to be 
fitted out with double soles and big headed nails, had gone 
with his gun ; but the charge he left of $1.20 for his work blew 
a big hole in the stock of gold I happened to have left. But 
with three Bank of France notes, $30 in all, good everywhere. 



and with a little silver in change, I felt financially safe in start- 
ing on. Besides, I had travelers checks amply sufficient for 
the trip, payable at several places in Sw^itzerland. 

"The Swiss government, in case of war, may decide to 
exclude tourists, in order to husband its food supply," sug- 
gested one of the guests at the table. This suggestion the 
guest made after I had disclosed to him my plans, but not till 
after he had seen me eat. Switzerland, I knew, like every free 
and independent country, had the right of self-preservation 
and could defend itself against any impending peril, however 
bald and short of stature. The fact that I had brought my 
appetite along with me, had smuggled it into France, without 
detection by the custom officers, had now become self-evident. 
If the Swiss government should also hear of this and decide 
to reserve its food supply for its own three million people, 
rather than to let me in, it meant my being stopped at the 
frontier. 

But neither the matter of food nor of francs fretted my 
contented mind as I walked along the zigzag road up over the 
range at the upper end of the valley of Chamonix. The sun 
* was fairly hot, and once I felt a blister beginning to raise — 
well, raise trouble with one of my feet. This was easily 
remedied though, by shifting the stockings from one foot to 
the other. I said stockings, for I always wore two pairs at a 
time. They wear much longer. And that morning I looked 
with longing eyes, I admit, upon an automobile that went 
whizzing by, followed at times by several carriages and bag- 
gage wagons, all heavily loaded and evidently hurrying to get 
somewhere. Down the other side a cool breeze tempered the 
effects of the hot sun and made walking in that mountainous, 
rocky region most delightful, and I soon had my reward, or 
better, perhaps, my revenge on the automobilist who so coolly 
passed me by on the other side. 

At the frontier, between France and Switzerland, a small 
stream separates the two countries at this point and here 
French soldiers had held up both the horses and automobile. 
No automobile nor horse could leave France. They were 
needed at home. The owners, however, if they desired to do 
so, could continue the pleasure of their journey, as I was doing, 
on foot. Some of them decided to do so and started on, 
heavily laden with bags, valises and small trunks on their 
backs. Surely they were anxious to get somewhere very 
soon. 

When I came up, the squad of French soldiers looked me 
over, but seemed to see nothing about me that would be of any 
great loss to the country if I was allowed to leave it. While 
I was awfully tanned I was not, apparently, quite dark enough 
to be seized as contraband of war. So I walked over the 



stone bridge, out of France into Switzerland. Then the trouble 
began. I, too, was held up. It happened like this. 

Some two hundred feet from the Swiss end of the bridge 
a squad of Swiss soldiers were lounging around in front 
of a small hotel and, as I approached, the officer in charge 
left them and walked slowly out into the road to meet 
me. To avoid bringing on hostilities too soon, I slackened 
my pace, turned towards him and stopped. I said nothing. 
Not that I did not feel like being on speaking terms with the 
Swiss government, but I had stopped and it was his next move. 
He must speak first. He did. 

"Tourist?" he said, very quietly. 

I nodded my head and, thinking it about time to say some- 
thing, began. First I poked the first finger of my right hand 
into the pit of my stomach and said: 

"Ameri-can," with the emphasis on the can. That poke 
in the stomach usually broke the ice, opened up diplomatic 
relations in all countries. And the word American ordinarily 
was sufficiently definite. Once, in Paris, the inquiry came 
back, "Mexico?" and on another occasion, "Brazil?" but when 
I further added, "New York," all doubt vanished everywhere. 
I was then definitely located. 

But this Swiss officer could understand and could speak 
some English, so I told him I was on my way to Lucerne. 
To explain my manner of going, I repeated the name and 
marked time in the middle of the road. He readily under- 
stood. We were getting on fine. How Lucerne came to be 
my point of destination again illustrates how good fortune 
followed me. The day I reached Geneva I was on the point 
of sending my valise by post to Trieste, in Austria. The war 
with Servia, I could not see would interfere with my plan to 
sail from that port in the early fall and I was careful to have 
my mail addressed to the same place. The mail I have never 
yet seen and the same fate would doubtless have overtaken 
the valise had I chosen that city as my destination. Besides, 
no end of trouble, personally, would have awaited me had I 
tried to reach that port, a port that soon was and still is 
blockaded. But as I entered the post office at Geneva it oc- 
curred to me that possibly a second change of underwear or 
some other article the valise contained might come in handy 
before I could reach Trieste, a month or six weeks later, so 
I looked up the address of some half-way place and finally 
decided on Lucerne. To send the valise by post to that city, 
some two hundred and fifty miles, cost sixteen cents. When 
I pushed the valise in through the window I did not know the 
rate and laid down an amount of money I knew would be more 
than sufficient and said nothing. The clerk made the neces- 
sary entries and handed me back all but sixteen cents. Then 
he said something I did not understand and for that he charged 



me two cents more. That is, he extracted two cents from 
the change he had handed back. In due time, however, he 
gave me a little slip of paper. It was a registry receipt. It 
had cost me the extra two cents, but it was the best investment 
I ever made, the best two-cent investment. 

When the officer next asked me for my passport, I had 
none. Very few if any tourists then traveling in Europe had 
them. For some years they had become unnecessary. But I 
produced the little registry receipt instead. It seemed to satis- 
fy. Then he asked me something I did not understand and for 
a time things were all off. But a private standing by drew us 
into communication again. He pointed towards the side of 
his trousers and finally pulled his wallet out and touched it 
several times. It was enough. I knew, every one knows 
what that means. One touch of the pocketbook makes the 
whole world understand, particularly if it has been touched 
before. So I pulled out the little gold and silver I had left 
and showed it to him. This too seemed to satisfy and he 
indicated I could pass on. Then, hesitating for a moment, he 
added quietly : 

"Would you mind giving me your name?" This I did on 
a slip of paper torn from my diary and, thanking him, I 
saluted and walk slowly along. 

A couple of miles further on, the highway tunnels the 
precipitous sides of the mountain. Here more soldiers were 
stationed, but they said nothing as I came along nor did I. 
While resting near this point for a moment, where a good 
view down into the gorge five hundred feet below could be 
had, I was overtaken by the rear guard, so to speak, of that 
small army of escaping refugees that had been held up at the 
stone bridge. These last, like the first, were loaded down with 
their personal effects and went on, struggling and staggering 
under their heavy burdens, up the steep grade in the hot sun. 
They recognized me and I them. Later I learned they were 
mostly Italians, hurrying up over the passes to the railroad 
station at Martigny, fifteen miles away, where they were able 
to catch a train through the Simplon tunnel to Italy. 

That night I slept in a barn. The good woman to whom 
I addressed myself, by means, of course, of sign language, 
carried some blankets out to the barn and stuffed a mattress 
with hay, with the result that I never slept more comfortably. 
There was trouble enough in the house without my adding to 
it. The eldest son had his gun leaning up side of the front 
door and his knapsack packed and ready. He was to leave 
for the frontier "in the morning. The husband was in hiding, 
I surmised. A younger son was waiting for the second call. 
The rain kept me under cover the next day except when I went 
into the house for my meals. 

Wednesday morning, under a blue sky, I started for the 



Hospice of St. Bernard, 8,000 feet up in the mountains. The 
rain of the day before had swollen the streams and in places 
the heavy retaining walls along the highway were being 
undermined and were falling into the torrent. The famous 
old road, in places, had become almost impassable for wagons, 
and the roar of the water, at times, was so great I could not 
have heard a wagon coming up behind me if one had done so, 
to say nothing of the less noisy steps of a pedestrian, for 
instance, out for plunder. I speak of this, for a man some 
two months before, on his way over this pass, was found 
murdered. The dogs at the hospice had scented his body out, 
near the highway. This newspaper item, I admit, occasionally 
came into my mind, as I went up higher and higher and 
further away from the little villages along the way. But 
what, for a time, disconcerted me more was a loud but some- 
what smothered thud, coming from somewhere, above the roar 
of the rushing water. Time and again I looked behind me but 
discovered nothing. It finally occurred to me that the high 
water, rushing down the valley, would occasionally under- 
mine a bowlder in the bottom of the stream and this bowlder, 
set going down stream, would soon strike against another. 
From under the big volume of water above then came the 
smothered thud. 

Wednesday afternoon, about two o'clock, the explosion 
came. I was about six miles from the top of the pass, and was 
beginning to feel a little tired. On ahead a short distance, 
in front of a small hotel, a group of some fifty Swiss soldiers 
were standing around. When I came within speaking dis- 
tance, more to take a short rest than anything, I halted. As 
before, I began the conversation by poking myself in the 
stomach. Then I told them who I was. One of them soon 
replied in good English. 

"Tell me," I said to him hurriedly, "what is the news?" 

"What, haven't you heard?" he replied, with an air of 
wonder, looking upon me as one who must have just arrived 
from some other planet. "Why, Germany has declared war 
against Russia and against France and is going through Bel- 
gium to get at France. The French, with a million men, are 
ready to come through near Bale, on our frontier and the 
Italians are likely to try and come up through this pass. And 
last night England declared war against Germany." 

That w^as the news. The sound of the explosion, which 
shook the earth five days before, had just reached me. Aside 
from the sound of the drum and the sight of the bustling- 
uniforms at Chamonix on Sunday and the two small squads 
of soldiers at the stone bridge the next day, little had occurred 
to cause me to listen to anything but my longings for more 
mountain climbing. To be sure, the departure of the eldest 
son, with his gun and heavily packed knapsack, made me sur- 



mise Switzerland was possibly beginning to mobilize, but the 
only outward indication of such precautions was an occasional 
soldier or two stationed at the railroad bridges and tunnels. 
Beyond that I saw nothing in the lives or homes of the people 
into which I entered that was at all warlike. I do remember, 
at the top of one pass, when the apparent proprietor of the 
small hotel there reached home after a long climb up from 
Martigny, I did notice his whole family hurried out to meet 
him and gathered about the wagon, eager to learn something, 
some news. From all this and more I was shut out. Not a 
newspaper I could read had I seen since Saturday, August 1st, 
and then a copy of an early edition of the Daily Mail, printed, 
of course, the day before. At the hotel at Chamonix the 
guests all left on Sunday and since then I had been perambu- 
lating through a most delightfully mountainous country, but 
one in which I could gain little news if I had tried. To be 
frank, I was so little concerned I didn't try. Possibly the 
obliging and considerate Swiss officer at the stone bridge 
might have told me something, if I had asked, but the chances 
are military strictures would have prevented. 

Furthermore, when a pedestrian, somewhat weary, stops 
at a farmhouse at night for something to eat and a place to 
sleep and finally, after making many signs, succeeds in getting 
both, he is then more bent on going to bed than he is on in- 
quiring of the motherly but more or less dull matron what the 
political situation is, or what the closing quotations in the 
stock market were, at home and abroad. 

So, shut out from any kind of communication with the 
outside world for five days, an isolation I had invited, I had 
not stopped, in my care-free tramping trip, to even listen 
to the intimations of the coming reign of hell over all Europe. 

Occasionally, during the day, when not absorbed by the 
delightful scenery all about, my mind would wander a little, 
and, at times, I wondered — that was all, just wondered, noth- 
ing more burdensome, nothing of the nature of nor likely to 
cause worry — I merely wondered what was possibly going 
on in the world below in my absence. 

What this Swiss soldier told me — how it all comes back 
to me now — was slow in getting into my brain. For days I 
had had occasion for nothing but slow thinking, or no think- 
ing at all, for that matter. I had read nothing, heard nothing. 
hence thought nothing. Confirmed tramp that I was, I had 
no occasion to think. I w^asn't used to it. Where I was to 
sleep or what I Avas to eat never caused my brain to give such 
matters a moment's thought, till, perhaps, the time arrived 
each day. Then, sufficient unto the time was the bother there- 
of, merely the bother. And several times, when up opposite 
Mt. Blanc, under that dome of deep blue, a feeling came over 
me as I looked about, with nothing near but rocks and snow 



10 



and sky — and God ; a feeling came over me that I was not 
awake, that it was not real — except God. And if I had not 
been alone, to make sure, I certainly would have had some one 
pinch me, to see if I was awake. 

But slowly I began to wake up, wake up to the situation. 
The little country of Switzerland, into which I had wandered 
so willingly, I now found was surrounded by the armies of 
eight nations already at war. Italy, the only other bordering 
state, was fast getting ready to fight. Thus, every inch of the 
outer side of the short Swiss frontier was lined with living im- 
plements of war, twenty millions of them, with Germany on the 
north, Austria on the east, Italy on the south, and France on 
the west. Into the center of this hell I had deliberately 
walked. I was completely surrounded. Surely, I didn't need 
to have any one pinch me now. I was already pinched. 

Now fully awake, as I then thought, for a moment I con- 
sidered the situation so far as it concerned me personally. 
Just a little farther up, not far in miles and meters from the 
millions below, was a life-saving, not death-dealing, station, 
manned, not by men but by dogs, doing their duty as they saw 
it, or rather, as they smelled it. They were devoting their 
lives, not to destroying but to saving human beings. I wanted 
to get my arms about their necks and hug them, just as I 
had many times as a child hugged that chum of mine, a 
blood relative of theirs. Feeling thus, with scarcely another 
word, I left the men and started for the dogs. 

The increasing size of the patches of perpetual snow along 
the sides of the old way marked out by Napoleon compelled all 
travelers to finally leave that route entirely, and before I 
reached the big stone houses at the top I went through drifts 
eight and ten feet high, drifts shoveled out to make passage 
over the new highway possible. 

"Bravo, bravo," repeated a group of soldiers at the Grand 
St. Bernard Hospice when my umbrella told them the number 
of miles, some thirty, I had climbed that day to reach the top. 
Ordinarily umbrellas don't talk, you know. I assume you 
know it, at least most of us know it, when we, of course un- 
consciously, steal, take and carry some other fellow's umbrella 
away. But, without my smiting it, mine talked that night 
to a group of nearly two hundred Swiss soldiers gathered about 
the doors of the big stone hospice where they were quartered. 
Unlike those further back down the road, these men seemed 
more anxious to find out about my trip than they were to 
communicate war news to me, and several of them at the 
same time attempted to show their comrades, by pushing 
them aside and coming up close to me, how easily they could 
make me misunderstand what they said. With one accord, 
in this they all succeeded. Finally, when the conversation 



11 



lagged, I brought my umbrella into it and opened it up afresh — 
that is, opened up the conversation. 

Using a small plot of sand close by as the paper and the 
end of the umbrella as the pen, I wrote out as much of my 
history as was at all necessary, interjecting various signs with 
my head and hands to make plain, on the plot of sand, the 
plot of the story. These soldiers spoke, some German, some 
French, some Italian and some a Swiss dialect of their own 
invention, upon which no one has yet tried to infringe. To 
write in that or any of the languages referred to was, for me, 
impossible, as impossible as to use the German type, so com- 
mon in Switzerland. So, using the only type of writing I 
knew, the umbrella soon told them the number of kilometers 
I had climbed that day. Not satisfied, one man with a sword 
in his hand insisted upon the umbrella giving me away by 
telling them how old I was. When these figures were thrown 
upon the screen, the screen of sand, I blushed. But because 
of the heavy coat or overcoat of tan I wore, like many another, 
I was compelled to blush unseen. 

"Bravo, bravo," said the men as they dispersed. Coming 
to myself, I found my feet stone cold. To get them warm was 
a problem, up there. To run or walk much was out of the 
question, I was so tired. Inside, in the large reception room, 
the open fires were not yet open and outside, in the wind, 
my sweaty shirt soon set me shivering. Ice water, I knew, 
would warm my feet up, warm them up better than a warm- 
ing-pan, but all the streams of ice v/ater were in places shaded 
from the sun. To sit down on the rocks near one of these 
streams in the shade long enough to take my shoes and stock- 
ings ofif and to put them on again, would leave me chilled 
through, so I picked out a bank of snow in the sun. I too 
wanted, just then, a place in the sun. Into that bank of snow, 
made hard and icy by the season's freezing and thawing, went 
my cold, tired feet. I rubbed them and scrubbed them up to 
the ankles and higher, and twisted them around in the bank 
till both my hands and feet ached with the cold treatment they 
got. But before I could dry them and get my shoes and stock- 
ings on, my feet were glowing with a pleasant warmth and 
the tired feeling was nearly gone. 

The elements that night were also at war. Before I could 
get comfortably warm in the big but chilly bed, so chilly I 
nursed my nose to keep it warm by covering it with the sheets, 
a ripping thunderstorm came up. The wind, too, in strong 
pufifs, began pulling and pushing the windows and shutters 
while the thunder rivaled in roar the noise of the practice 
artillery firing of the troops in the narrow pass outside. The 
measured tread of the troops drilling on the stone floors below 
and the sharp words of command were also a part of the 
general tumult in the heavens above and in the earth beneath. 

12 



But I slept. I should have slept, I think, if a submarine, in 
the water under the ice, the thick ice covering half the lake 
close by, had blown the ice high in the air. 

In the morning the dogs again all wagged me a welcome, 
all except the one, the apparently dead one whose rich colored 
fur, nicely stuffed, stands upon a pedestal in the main office. 
No one now denies him the honor of having given up his life for 
another, for one of us, but some of us still refuse him in heaven 
the soul he surely had on earth. And the good monks mo- 
tioned me — the only way they could make me understand — that 
I was welcome, freely welcome to stay longer. This was 
after I had tried to make a voluntary contribution in the little 
box by the chapel door. But when I found they could not 
change the large denomination of paper money I had, and I 
had little else, the prospect of remaining at my ease, still tired 
though I was, did not appear possible. So, denying myself of 
the anticipated pleasure of a longer visit, I started down in a 
cold, driving rain. The umbrella fairly protected the upper 
part of my body, but from my knees down I was soon soaking 
wet. Knickerbockers without leggins are nice, but not in 
a driving rain. The wind at times came with such force that 
I had to shield myself beside some shelving rocks and, only a 
little farther up, the clouds were being driven across the tops 
of the black peaks with a roar that to me certainly was new. 
Aside from the squad of soldiers I met the afternoon before 
in front of the small hotel, now turned by them into a com- 
fortable place of shelter from the storm outside, I saw but 
one person all the forenoon, on the way down. This was a 
man who had apparently retired from active business and 
sought the solitude of his own society. He was seated near 
the highway on a pile of good-sized stones, cracking slowly 
away with a long-handled hammer at one of them he held 
between his feet. An empty bag over his shoulders and his 
wet clothes alone kept him warm — his work didn't — couldn't. 
He did not work fast enough to even steam up his own breath 
in the raw wind. Unlike a man I passed in Wales one day, 
doing like work, he didn't even whistle. But by setting a 
good pace down the muddy macadam I kept warm, and soon 
after noon the sun came out. Then that and the exercise 
dried out my shoes and clothes on me. 

Friday, the next morning, when I reached the railroad 
station at Martigny, a financial panic occurred in the im- 
mediate neighborhood of my pocketbook. It was a Black 
Friday for me, sure. I had already decided, while in the com- 
forting companionship of the dogs up at the hospice, that, 
instead of completing the trip to Lucerne entirely on foot, I 
had better do less walking and hurry the trip, somewhat, by 
train. So with an air of financial strength equal to that which 
I knew existed, physically, in my legs, I stepped up to the ticket 

13 



office at Martigny, opened up within careful range of the 
ticket agent's eyes a roll of three $10 Bank of France notes 
and, picking out one at random, tossed it towards him with 
the careless action of one used to such things. 

"Visp, third class," I said, holding up three fingers. 
Three fingers, you know, or I again assume you know, in some 
places means one thing and in other places, not the same but 
something very different. The ticket agent evidently was not 
running a bar and clearly understood what I wanted. And 
don't anticipate, because you now know of the panic, still un- 
known to me, that then existed — don't anticipate the ticket 
agent would not touch paper money. He touched it all right, 
touched it just enough to send it sliding across the smooth 
surface back into my hands again. Then he gave his hand 
a slight wavy motion towards the bank note as if to insure 
its safe return to the home port. Slight as it was, the wavy 
motion almost blew me off my feet. Individuals, I knew, 
sometimes get scared. But here was a big corporation, a big 
railroad, owned and operated by the Swiss government itself, 
and yet it too had lost its nerve. My $30 of paper money 
was worthless. 

What was I to do? There were just two things I could 
do, walk or hand out the last little piece of gold I had. To 
walk a long distance, to Lucerne, for instance, was more ex- 
pensive, because slower. It would take more days to do it 
and during those extra days I must eat. Out came the piece 
of gold. 

The train, consisting of ten cars, was crowded, mostly 
with singing Italians, who, with their few belongings, were 
being carried home by way of the Simplon tunnel, at the ex- 
pense of the Swiss government. Once seated, I did some 
thinking. To stop off at Visp, as I had now planned, and go up 
to Zermatt might leave me shut in, shut in with the Matter- 
horn but without money. Now that paper money was worth- 
less, travelers checks might also fail. And I must eat, though 
a man can do many things on a strong stomach, even when 
empty. But I wanted to hold down what little silver I had, 
now that I had thrown up that last piece of gold. So, rather 
than take the chance of hanging around the Matterhorn, both 
on an empty stomach and with an empty pocketbook, I let the 
Matterhorn go hang. An extra fifteen cents paid to the con- 
ductor allowed me to remain on the train at Visp and until 
Brieg was reached, five miles further up the Rhone valley, at 
the entrance to the Simplon tunnel. There I left the train. 

All the recent railroad maps I had looked at had a line 
from Brieg, where I now was, running up over the Furka pass 
to Goschenen, at the north entrance of the St. Gothard tunnel, 
where I knew I could get a train down to Lucerne, sixty 
miles to the north. As three or four railroad lines centered 

14 



at Brieg, the train for Goschenen was therefore the one to find. 

"When does the next train leave for Goschenen?" I asked 
of a man in uniform, standing on one of the several platforms 
at this big station. For once I thought I would try to and so 
did omit the preliminary and introductory poke in my stomach. 

"There is a railroad built to Goschenen, but it is not yet in 
operation," promptly replied the officer, in good English, so 
good that his voice would have had a pleasant sound to me 
had it not conveyed such staggering information. 

Goschenen, a small station, was sixty miles away, on the 
other side of a pass eight thousand feet high and I had a little 
over a dollar in silver left. On the way, there was not the 
slightest possibility of getting a travelers check cashed. It 
was just half past twelve and I had had nothing to eat since 
early morning. Then it was but a small portion of bread and 
cheese, the usual breakfast. 

But off I started, up the Rhone valley, bare-headed, but 
protected from the hot sun by the umbrella. Across my right 
hip hung a small hand-bag and on the other hip a bundle of 
underclothing, both weighing possibly twenty pounds. Bae- 
deker's guide-book told me the way. I said I had a little over 
a dollar. During the last few days, if at any time I had been 
asked the balance of cash on hand, I could have told, without 
counting it, the amount to a penny. I knew all the time. 
And this I knew, that I had some seven cents' worth of sweet 
chocolate, two small sticks, left. And this I knew, that I must 
get to Goschenen Saturday, the next night, in time to catch the 
last train for Lucerne. To have to stay in Goschenen over 
night, even if the trains ran Sunday, would so reduce the 
amount of bullion in my safe deposit vault, now kept very safe 
by my feeling for it every few miles, that I would thfn not 
have silver enough to buy the ticket to Lucerne. That would 
mean sixty more miles added to my itinerary. But the thing 
above all others in importance that I did not know, was when 
that last train left. Revolving these matters over and over in 
my mind till they became so unpleasant that I had to drive 
them out by main and brain force, I plugged along, making 
about three miles an hour. 

About two o'clock, while I was making a short stop in the 
shade to rest my feet a little, I heard the sound of a locomo- 
tive whistle and soon a heavily loaded passenger train went 
merrily by up the valley toward Goschenen. Now what did 
that officer mean by telling me the road was not yet in opera- 
tion? At the next crossing I also took particular notice that 
the rails were fairly bright from constant use. But never 
mind, I was fast getting used to these little disappointments. 

Toward night I thought a little coffee might brace me 
to keep up to the schedule. I could not take the time to boil 
it. I mustn't miss that last train at Goschenen. So I filled 

15 



the tin cup of my alcohol lamp with ice water from a near-by 
glacier stream, put in a tablespoonful of coffee and drank it, 
dregs and all. My stomach was not in a very bellicose con- 
dition just then, and was becoming more and more inclined 
to submit to anything. And really, I think the raw coffee 
or the ice water, or both, braced me a little. 

Further on I came upon a body of cavalry, the first I had 
met thus far. Then I passed some two hundred soldiers, all 
washing their feet in a stream of ice water that ran parallel 
with the road. They had had a hard march from somewhere. 
I knew from the looks of their faces, and I also appreciated 
how good the ice water felt to their feet. 

Incidentally, and slight in its way, I was annoyed that 
afternoon for miles by flies, horse-flies fully an inch long. I 
did not mind their getting a little nourishment now and then, 
though for them I had no nourishment to spare, out of the 
calves of my legs. Nor did I object to their resting them- 
selves by riding along on the under side of the umbrella, third 
class or, even like the Italians on the train, free at my expense, 
but I did remonstrate when they came down with the prevail- 
ing thirst for blood, and drew it fresh from the top of my bald 
head. Sweating profusely I finally shut down on these joy 
rides of theirs by closing the umbrella suddenly. Once, before 
doing this, I counted twenty-eight flies thus stealing a ride. 

About seven o'clock that night I began to look about for 
some place to sleep. The villages were not so very far apart, 
but the people were in a panic. The hurried movement of 
troops along the highways had stirred the people up and every 
stranger was a spy. After several failures on my part to 
convince them, by signs of course, that I was not a spy, one 
good woman lighted a candle and was about to show me up 
to a bedroom when a man came in and began to tell her, in a 
very excited manner, something about me. What he told her 
I don't know, only it was something, something he so per- 
sistently repeated that she hesitated for a time and finally, 
setting the candle down on the table, motioned to me to seek a 
sleeping place elsewhere, further along up the valley. This 
same man, a short distance back, had likewise waved me away 
from another house, not his own, when I started to call there. 
Evidently, he had me in for a spy. But the woman submitted 
to his reasoning somewhat reluctantly and bowed me out 
into the dark with genuine regret. The houses and small vil- 
lages now assumed a different attitude toward me. The dark 
shingle roofs and unpainted, weather-worn sides met me with 
an uninviting, almost ugly black look, and if a light now and 
then blinked from a black window, the lamp was surely put 
there only to spy me out, as I walked along up the winding 
road in the dark. Another mile and a half and I came to a 
small inn. The proprietor could speak English. 

16 



Thirty cents for the room, he told me. I subtracted that 
from the reserve fund I still kept feeling for, and finally de- 
cided I must make the reduction, come what would from the 
folly of trying to long do business upon a depreciated and fast- 
depreciating currency. 

"You want supper tonight, of course," said the proprietor. 
That was true. I did want supper, several of them all at once, 
too. But what I wanted more was to feel sure I had silver 
enough to buy that ticket for Lucerne when I reached Gos- 
chenen. I still felt my legs could be depended upon in the 
morning for further hard service, and strong as my stomach 
was, my will power was stronger yet and could still make it 
submit, submit to any terms of peace, even to going to bed 
without a piece of bread. But if the price of the ticket was 
found to be greater than the stock of silver on hand, no in- 
flation was possible. I was going to take no chances, no 
chances with inflation, whatever the ratio. 

"No," I replied to the inquiry about supper, "I have just 
had something." That was true, too. O, you can make even 
a lawyer tell the truth, sometimes, when he is hungry. I had 
just had something, a little nibble of that sweet chocolate. 
There was about four cents' worth left. 

"How early do you want your breakfast?" 

"Never mind about breakfast. I want to get an early 
start." 

"If I were you I would not try to get over Furka pass. 
It has been fortified and you may have trouble in getting by. 
You had better go over the Grimsel and the Brunig if you want 
to get through to Lucerne. You see it is not now so safe 
traveling. Three men were shot last night just below here 
after dark. They did not halt." 

For a moment I wondered how the command to halt 
sounded in the language, one of the languages which a Swiss 
soldier might happen to use ; whether in any language but 
my own it would sound as severe. But I was too tired to 
wonder very long at much of anything. Hungry as a bear, 
I went to bed without any supper and the next morning 
started off early without any breakfast. 

Incidentally, the night before, I did not get more than 
four or five hours' sleep. A piano player in the next room 
kept me awake. I had heard so little music lately that, for 
a time, I enjoyed it ; but she continued till after midnight to 
play everything under the sun and the moon, too. But she 
was a star player, and I forgave her. 

About nine o'clock the next morning I first caught a 
glimpse, up through a narrow gorge, of the zigzag road up 
into the clouds, over the Grimsel pass. One look was enough. 
I decided to take the risk of the less precipitous route over 
the Furka, strongly fortified though it might be. At Gletsch, 

• 

17 



a short distance further on, an officer came out from a group 
of soldiers near the inn, and considerately put me through 
what was fast coming to be my catechism. While we were 
talking, in English, he carelessly took out his white handker- 
chief and, as if to dry it in the breeze, waved it slowly back 
and forth. I did not think of it at the time, but I soon had 
reason to know it was a signal to those at the top of Furka 
pass, some four or five miles away, but in plain sight, if only 
I had known where to look. Here, too, the railroad ended — the 
railroad the uniformed man at Brieg told me was not yet in 
operation. He told me the truth ; the road to and the tunnel 
under the pass were far from completed. Up to this point 
the road had been used only for military purposes. 

The top of the pass, the top of the last pass I had to climb 
to get to Goschenen was in plain sight. A somewhat shorter 
but steeper trail over the pass led ofif from the highway, a 
mile or so farther on, but I stuck to the road. The moderate 
grade my legs would stand, but occasionally when I tried to 
cut oil a portion of the zigzag route by taking the steeper path, 
the bunching up of the muscles in my legs a little, warned me 
of the bigger bunch to come if I persisted in such abuse. 
Cramps, for a time, will put an end to climbing as quickly as 
they do to swimming. But on I went, somewhat slower, to 
be sure, the higher up I got. The higher up, the better the view 
of the Rhone glacier, as it poured down from between the 
peaks above like a mass of thick lava, dazzling Avhite though 
it was. And, like most of the other glaciers I had just seen 
near Chamonix, this one too was drawing back its head up 
into the higher recesses of the Alps, back some three hundred 
feet since last I saw it, twenty-six years ago. And the ice 
grotto, a spacious room cut into the interior, had melted 
away and disappeared entirely. But I was not interested, 
just then, either in glaciers or grottos or anything but grit. 
Was there enough of that to get to the top? Nor did I stop 
to pick some of the rank-growing and luxurious-looking cow- 
slips side of the road up there close to perpetual snow, though 
I would fain have filled my stomach with the appetizing 
stuff, so tantalizing to a man whose stomach had been some 
thirty hours empty. Once or twice I stopped to rest, but 
something spurred me on, warned me not to wait, not to wait 
a minute. Henceforth there was to be no rest, no rest for 
my tired legs, till I had caught that last train at Goschenen. 
How I wished I knew when it left. 

Finally, just as I began to feel that possibly the last sentry 
had been left behind and I knew the top of the pass was close 
by, a squad of soldiers suddenly appeared around a bend in the 
road, near a small shanty, and, bringing down his gun with 
the bayonet towards me, one of the men yelled, "Halt!" loud 
enough to have been heard a mile. 



Now it was not at all necessary for him to have yelled 
as loud as that, as loud as that at me, anyway. I was not 
going so fast that it needed a blast like that to stop me. A 
puff of wind, a gentle whisper would have brought me to a 
standstill on that up-grade. 

I halted all right. Then, walking slowly up to the point 
of the bayonet I brought the poke in the stomach into action ; 
I mean, the poke in my own stomach, not his. I was not pok- 
ing any one in the stomach, just then, but myself. But neither 
the poke nor the word "Ameri-can" seemed to dent his brain. 
Then the sergeant, fully conscious of the greater importance 
of his rank, came up. I know how sergeants feel. I have 
been one myself. He looked the little registry receipt over, 
without being able, I am sure, to read a word of it. I told him, 
as plainly as I could, I was walking to Lucerne, where my 
valise was. But he reached a different conclusion. 

"You no Ameri-can. You Itali-an. No pass," and he 
waved me back. 

This was the first time I had been complimented on my 
looks. I presume I was black enough, with tan and dirt com- 
bined, to be taken for an Italian from even the south of Italy. 
But when the sergeant peremptorily told me I could go no 
farther towards Goschenen, I just staggered over against the 
bank on the upper side of the road, apparently all in. 

The stagger was put on, part of it, I admit. It was a sort 
of stage stagger for the benefit of the sergeant, to work on 
his sympathies, but I found he had no sympathies to work on. 
The stagger did not strike him that way. He was not at all 
stage-struck. Still, some of the stagger was genuine. I had 
been drinking pretty hard that morning, drinking about all 
the ice water I could hold. It cost nothing. If it had cost 
anything I could not have been so extravagant as to have kept 
full on it all the time. Besides, it helped to keep my belt 
tight. You know, if your belt feels tight you think there is 
something inside even if there isn't. And with my belt tight 
I found it kept my knickerbockers from continually slipping 
down around my ankles. In a foreign country, where you 
are little known, such precaution is essential. So, as the ice 
water soon evaporated in sweat and steam, I had to frequently 
pull my belt up another hole till, hitch after hitch, my wasp- 
like waist was getting so small the big buckle in front, I 
think, reached clear around to my back-bone. 

And when the sergeant waved me back, it meant back 
down the eight thousand feet I had, at last, climbed up and 
then up over the Grimsel pass and next over the Brunig pass, 
both passes nearly as high. This I must do to get to Lucerne. 
At the prospect my tired legs kicked. They were utterly 
unable to stand the strain. 

Just then the lieutenant, a slight-built young officer, 

19 



appeared coming down from the fortifications which, till now, 
I had not noticed up the side of the mountain but a short dis- 
tance. Surely, a ray of hope, slender though it was ! 

"Have you been taking any photographs?" was one of the 
first questions, in good English, the officer asked. In a 
moment the small hand-bag, which had been lying on the 
ground during the prolonged holdup, together with the bundle 
of underwear, were opened wide to his inspection. Had a 
camera been one of my pieces of baggage, certainly the jig 
would have been up. 

"Well," said the officer, after inquiring if I knew, by 
name, a classmate of his now living in Chicago, and after 
being satisfied I was a genuine Yankee and not a spying 
Italian, "well, it is strictly against orders to allow any one 
to pass but — but you may go." I could have hugged that 
lieutenant, tired as I was just then, if it would not have been 
considered a breach of neutrality. 

That ended the holdups. Now could I catch that last 
train. The sweet strains of "Lead, Kindly Light" had been 
running through my head all the morning and, at times, com- 
ing up the long climb, one step, instead of being enough, 
seemed soon to become too much for me. But now it was 
down-grade and every step came easy. On I went, shuffling 
carelessly along down the winding road, so sleepy now that 
the strain of more holdups had given way to strains of a 
sweeter makeup, so sleepy that my eyes shut in spite of me. 
But I never let slip the chance to cut corners and many times 
left the road entirely and almost ran down the side of the 
mountain, whenever the way to the road again, far below, 
was clear. Once, I met coming up four six-horse teams, 
loaded with army stores, struggling up the grade and again, 
some two hundred soldiers on their way up. But these did 
not interest me, nor attempt to stop me, in my hurry down. 

The Devil's bridge, not far from two miles above Gos- 
chenen and one of the wildest spots in the Alps, had no attrac- 
tion for me. The bridge and all the appurtenances thereto 
could go to the — could go to the owner, for all I cared. I 
was going to Goschenen. 

When about half a mile from the station, now in sight, 
I heard a locomotive whistle and out came a train from the 
north end of St. Gothard tunnel, going towards Lucerne. 
There it was, the last train, and I had missed it by half a mile. 
Hold on, it's a freight train. There may be another. It was 
yet only half past five. On I hurried, holding up the two 
bundles of baggage in my arms so the jouncing would not at 
the last minute break the straps, down a steep, crooked path, 
a short cut to the open space outside the station, and into the 
waiting room. The ticket window was open. 

"Ticket for Lucerne, third class," I said, handing, almost 

20 



throwing out all the silver I had left. The little ticket — no 
little bit of pasteboard ever looked so good to me before — the 
little ticket came back and with it about ten cents in change. 

"Is that the train?" I asked, pointing to some passenger 
cars on a side track, in which one or two persons were sitting. 

The ticket agent nodded. Before I could cross the tracks, 
a freight train, a slow-going, an awfully slow-going freight 
train, blocked the way. When it finally moved out of my way, 
I ran for the passenger train, pulled my short legs up the high 
steps and sat down inside. In less than five minutes, the 
train, the last train for Lucerne that night, started and I had 
caught it. Then I almost collapsed. 

Thirty-seven miles that day, sixty-two miles the last two 
days on nothing, as you know, but a few nibbles of sweet 
chocolate and gallons and gallons of ice water, one hundred 
and forty-eight miles during the five days from Chamonix, and 
mountain passes aggregating twenty-one thousand feet, 
climbed in addition to that done on the level — this is all on 
the level, — this is what almost caused the collapse, x^nd I did 
it, not to tell of it afterwards, but because I had to do it — 
simply had to. And how my feelings now changed toward 
that crazy cuss who, the night before, drove me away and 
caused me to go the extra mile and a half to the small inn. 
But for the extra mileage that day I should have missed the 
train the next day. Tell me, are such things mere coinci- 
dences? 

Well, I did not completely collapse, though the open win- 
dow was the only restorative, the only stimulant I had with 
me. But it felt good to just let go, let go of all my nerves 
and muscles and let them hang limp. Once or twice, though, 
I almost let go of myself, my consciousness. 

When the train, at nine-thirty Saturday night, after going 
the last mile or two through a winding tvmnel, came to a final 
stop at the station at Lucerne, I began to see what mobiliza- 
tion meant. The big station and the well-lighted streets 
near by were crowded and all the seats in the good-sized res- 
taurant were taken by soldiers, all talking excitedly. They 
were on guard, too, at every turn and corner, and trains were 
going out and trains were coming in, all filled with them. 

While directions, posted all about the station in conspic- 
uous places and printed in three languages, French, German 
and Italian, failed to help me, the first uniformed man I ap- 
pealed to spoke English. He easily directed me to the ofifice 
of the secretary of the Y. M. C. A. The hour was so late 
when I reached the place, however, that failing to get an 
answer to my repeated ringing of the door bell, at random I 
sought a hotel and went to bed with a last nibble of the sweet 
chocolate. 

How restful to me sounded the church bells of Lucerne 

21 



as they chimed out the hours of that night. No more was I 
to be compelled to walk till I got good and ready, good and 
rested. No more comforting thought had I ever experienced. 
In the words of Carton, in the "Tale of Two Cities," it was a 
far, far better rest that I came to than I had ever known. 

Twice during the night the measured tread of large bodies 
of troops, coming louder and louder and going fainter and 
fainter, accompanied through the otherwise still night by no 
other sound either of cornet or command, broke in on my 
sleep. Soon after daylight, again more troops. All day Sun- 
day the streets were occupied by them, marching to and from 
the railroad station and the barracks, each not far from my 
room. The soldiers went singing, as soldiers always do on 
their way to war, and the bands played as bands always do. 
But these Swiss bands had no base drums — instruments, musi- 
cal instruments if you please, that do more than any other 
musical instruments to lift the tired feet of marching men of¥ 
the ground. The band music, therefore, reminded me so 
much of the little German bands, so familiar at home. All the 
public halls and school buildings throughout the city, I found 
later, had also been converted into barracks for the troops, 
many of whom, from the dust on their shoes and trousers 
and their fiery-red features, I could see had marched into the 
city that Sunday from a long distance outside. 

I first went over to the post office, not far, about noon. 
The lobby was filled Avith an excited crowd. At the post office 
the telegraph office only was open. A soldier on guard al- 
lowed only so many in at a time. Most of these, I was at 
first surprised to find, were talking in English. When I could 
find a man who was not too excited to stop a moment, I asked 
him about the war, what was the latest. You remember I 
had not heard a word since the AVednesday before, up at the 
Grand St. Bernard pass. 

"Why, the Germans have broken through Belgium into 
France and the French are coming through Basel, near here, 
to get into Germany. Today we hear there is a big battle 
going on at Waterloo. There has been one big naval battle 
in the North Sea and three German battleships sunk. The 
English channel is loaded with mines and is closed. The Rus- 
sians have been driven back. Here, in Lucerne, are about 
three thousand Americans and half as many English, all shut 
in — this in Lucerne alone. All sailings from German and 
Austrian ports have been cancelled and many of the English 
passenger ships have been taken over by the English govern- 
ment. So, if we got to England, we could not get home." 

This was enough to hold me for a while. I went over to 
the lake, just a few steps, and sat down on one of the benches. 
That was as far as I got that day. 

The alcohol lamp had again been brought into play that 



morning in my room, when I finally got up. After a cup of 
good strong coffee and a small roll, which I bought with the 
little silver left, from a bakery across the street, I determined 
to postpone the big meal I had looked forward to for nearly 
three days till Sunday night. So, after I had sat on the bench 
till the circulation in my legs had almost ceased — the benches 
had no cushions, nor did I have much to sit on except my 
bones — I walked back to the hotel for supper. 

The bill of fare contained some thirty-two different dishes, 
all numbered. My first impulse was to begin with number 
one and go down through the list. Under the circumstances, 
that I had this day and for several days been denied much of 
my daily bread, it was a little hard to be thus led into temp- 
tation at the outset. Then again, the names of the dishes 
were all printed in gastronomic German, words almost as long 
as the average alimentary canal. To be compelled to try and 
pronounce such words was an evil from which any one might 
pray to be delivered. But I was half starved, I was desperate, 
so, counting up hurriedly the number of letters in some of the 
longest words, just as a newspaper man does the words for his 
scare-head, — I wasn't at all afraid of scaring my stomach ; 

no, my stomach, I knew, could stand any such kind of a 
scare just then ; it had been waiting to be scared for some time 
— so, after I had taken the count and pointed to the word, the 
girl nodded and went her way. 

Then I waited. Without exaggeration, I was faint, faint 
clear through. My nerves were faint ; my stomach trembled. 

1 was not exactly despondent, for I knew food was on the way, 
but I felt as if I should soon shrivel up and slide out of the 
chair down to the floor, if the food did not come pretty soon. 
The room was crowded with probably a hundred persons, 
most of them soldiers, all eating or drinking ; and rising above 
the tobacco smoke, in strength at least, was the savory odor 
of the different dishes, spread out before every one but my- 
self. Across the table from me sat a full-chested German, 
eating as Germans do when things taste good, and by his 
plate was a big mug of foaming beer. 

I had been drinking water all the afternoon, mainly to keep 
the sides of my stomach inflated as much as possible. They in- 
flate oysters in the same way, with water. But the girl mustn't 
think because I appeared dumb when I gave her the order, that 
I was an oyster, willing to swell vip on water while you wait. 

Orders for beer, I noticed, were filled promptly. I began 
to think the beer question over. It was so cheap. It smelt 
so good ; it would taste so much better. It would drive that 
faint feeling away so soon. But, seriously, I began to feel 
it was not fair to be tackled by my natural taste for the stuff 
in the condition I was then in. From a boy I had always liked 
the stuff as I did milk. Physically weak, was I also mentally 

23 



too weak now to hold out till that food came? I might have 
to stay in Lucerne, shut in for weeks, possibly for months. 
Who then knew? A habit fastened upon me when I was 
weak might easily get the best of me before I could get strong. 
This was not the first time on this trip I had had occasion 
to fight. To be perfectly frank, once or twice I didn't even 
fight. The first time was in Paris. I had been roaming about 
the eastern part of the city for several hours when, near the 
Louvre, I noticed a sign on an awning, "Diner, 1.30." It was 
then about that hour and, having had nothing but coffee since 
morning, I sat down at one of the tables on the sidewalk, 
under the awning. The waiter first slapped down across the 
table a loaf of bread the length and size of a baseball bat. It 
easily reached across the table from one side to the other. 
Then he spread out a napkin for me the size of a large towel, 
and finally put down on a little black saucer a bottle I at first 
thought was Worcestershire sauce, it was so black. But the 
cork was out and, as I looked upon it and looked again, the 
contents of the bottle began to turn red. I didn't, and after the 
several courses had disappeared — just how many I didn't 
remember — I started out on my own course, down the street, 
at peace with all the world. My course was perfectly straight 
and proper, but at the street crossings it soon seemed the part 
of wisdom to wait for a crowd of men I felt sure were, like 
myself, perfectly sober; to wait for them to collect and then 
unitedly cross the street with them, rather than to run the 
gauntlet of the street traffic alone. The sober judgment of 
many was safer than the self-satisfied opinion of one. So, on 
I went with them, gliding across from one curb to another, 
scarcely touching the pavement, so light upon my shoulders 
were all the cares and troubles of this life. Then I started for 
one of those convenient little enclosures of comfort, near the 
curb, for which Paris is noted, and walked completely around 
it three times before I discovered the entrance was closed up. 
I know I made no mistake about the entrance being closed for 
another man, fully as competent as myself, circled the same 
enclosure once and then started up the street for another. I 
followed. It is wonderful, too, how the contents of that bottle 
helped me to understand more easily the French language. 
For several days I had noticed, hung out on the rear end of 
some of the auto busses, the sign, "Complet." I did not then 
know what it meant, but since I had so recently seen through a 
glass darkly, now that I saw the sign face to face, I knew at 
once its meaning. My eyes were opened. The little bottle 
of wine, taken solely for my stomach's sake, had now enabled 
me to also read French at a glance. The busses, with that sign 
hanging out at the rear door, were in the same condition I 
then was. They were loaded ; they were full. The only differ- 
ence was, I did not have my sign hung out. 

24 



The next time I failed to fight was at a little inn some 
four miles from Martigny. I had walked twenty-nine miles 
that day down from the Grand St. Bernard pass, much of the 
way in a cold, driving rain. The proprietress, an elderly wom- 
an, saw I was somewhat tired and promptly brought out a half 
bottle of white wine. So long as the wine was white I thought 
I could safely look upon it ; but I couldn't. When the good 
woman again appeared with a pail of water, ready to show 
me up to my room, the wine had so surprised and delighted 
the inner man that I too was ready to climb any number of 
flights of stairs. So we went up and up till her wind gave out 
and she set the pail down. Then she led the way again, some- 
what faster, till finally, somewhere near heaven, she opened 
a door and showed me into a comfortable room. Had I known 
the water was for my room, I could easily have carried it up ; 
I felt so much lighter than water. The wine had so elevated 
my spirits this Swiss skyscraper needed no other elevator — 
that is, for me. Once in the room I started to shave. My 
hand-mirror I found broken, but that didn't matter. There 
was no looking-glass, but never mind. After that last glass 
of wine I could see to shave without any glass. And I was 
so optimistic just then, I knew I could find a mirror some- 
where, if I looked. So I opened the shutter and there it was, 
out on the back roof. I knew it was there all the time. To 
find it there did not surprise me any more than things do in 
dreams. The glass was a thick piece, with the quicksilver on 
the back slightly scratched. Either the scratches or something 
in my condition not quite up to the scratch, made me see 
double when I began to shave. When one cheek, like Jacob's, 
had been made smooth, I found another cheek on the other 
side of my face needed shaving, so I turned that cheek also. 
And everything was so handy. If I dropped the lather brush, 
why there the stand was, ready to catch it. If, in going from 
the window where the light was good, back to the stand where 
the water was, I made the trip in a somewhat circuitous course, 
there the bedstead stood, firm but friendly, keeping me in the 
straight and narrow path. And the shave was made without a 
cut. 

But now, at Lucerne, it was to be a fight to the finish. 
For a full half hour I had been suffering the torments of a 
thirsty man, without fresh water, cast away at sea. Food, 
wine, beer everywhere, but not a morsel, not a drop for me. 
Just then a new waitress came up and seeing no beer in front 
of me said, with the weight of a last straw, "Beer?" I shut my 
jaws together. I wanted to say, "Damn it, where is that 
food ?" but that was not the language she understood, though 
it was what I had been saying to myself a long time. Sullen, 
mad clear through, so thin any one could see I was mad clear 
through, I savagely shook my head. Finally the food came. 

25 



The delay was my own fault. I had picked out a dish 
with such a long name it had taken all this time to cook it. 

The next morning, with $20 in my pocket, drawn without 
trouble from the bank on one of my travelers checks, I went 
over to the office of the agent of the American Consul. With 
that vast amount of money in my pocket and stopping at a 
hotel, a new hotel, clean and comfortable in every way, where 
my living was to be less than $5 a week, I needed nothing, 
nothing but rest. Just then the American Consul had none, I 
found. His office was the dining hall of a large hotel, given 
over to his use and the use of the various committees appointed 
at a meeting of stranded Americans held a few days before. 
From the twelve hundred present at that meeting were ap- 
pointed committees on transportation, banking, consular ser- 
vice, publicity, men's relief, women's relief, finance, etc. Some 
fifty men and women had volunteered their services, and twen- 
ty or more of them I found hard at work. The room was also 
crowded, mostly with women, seventy-five to one hundred of 
them, all talking at once. One of the days when the excite- 
ment was at its extreme and many were with little means 
aside from their return tickets, just then worthless, one of the 
amusing sights was a telegram from Italy posted, as follows : 

"John Smith will take to New York, on an elegant steamer 
he has chartered in an Italian port, ninety-six passengers for 
the guaranteed price of $700 each." 

Had the well-meaning Mr. Smith, whom then very few 
knew, fixed the price at $T,000,000 each, it would have appealed 
scarcely less to the practically penniless American people who, 
like myself, were then in hell — shut in. 

During these days of excitement neither the hotel men 
nor the Swiss people generally took advantage of the situation. 
Credit was readily extended and prices kept at the old figures. 
In fact, a law was passed fixing a heavy penalty for raising 
prices. While the one feeling uppermost was of horror, 
horror at the thought of the millions of men only a short dis- 
tance from us, enthusiastically engaged in trying to kill each 
other, yet here were a few hundred of us shut in, in Lucerne, 
complaining because we had, instead of killing each other, 
nothing else to do but to kill time. Lucerne certainly was a 
beautiful place in which to kill time. But even in so beautiful 
a place as the Garden of Eden, if shut in, if compelled to stay 
there, we would have kicked at killing time there, I am afraid. 
The office of the American Consul was as far as I went the 
second day. 

But all pleasure in a walking trip ended when I reached 
Lucerne. The blight of the bayonet in the homes I had al- 
ready entered made further journeying unpleasant. Inci- 
dentally my left leg gave out a few days after. For several 
days I had done little else but sit around on the benches facing 

26 



the lake, listening to the music at the Kursaal. In some 
way, during this period of inaction, the hard wood of the 
benches pressed upon the nerves so as to paralyze the muscles 
that raised the toes of my left foot off the ground. Hence, 
in walking, to avoid stubbing my toes at every step, I had to 
swing my left leg around in a half circle. This style of step, 
somewhat different from the goose-step now so noticeable, 
stuck by for two or three weeks. After trying massage and 
alcohol without result, I decided to see if the hair of the dog 
would not cure the bite. Walking did it and walking might 
cure it. 

So r left the hotel one clear morning, walked six miles 
to the foot of Mt. Pilatus, climbed to the top, seven thousand 
feet, spent two hours there drinking in the view of the snow- 
capped peaks to the east, south and west, and had supper at 
the hotel again before six at night, minus the paralyzed 
muscles. 

But with restored muscles, the presence of a mobilized 
army of three hundred thousand men at every turn made ex- 
tended trips through Switzerland on foot barren of fun. So 
I contented myself with short walks of ten miles or so over 
the hills and through the pine woods near by. One day I 
suddenly came iipon a company of soldiers, lying in ambush 
during a practice battle in the woods to the south of the city. 
The first warning was the sharp command, "Halt !" Another 
day I found myself, in climbing over an unfrequented route, 
coming too near a rifle range, now always in active use. Some 
days, in my trips, I found I disturbed up in the woods squads 
of young musicians who sought out secluded spots for their 
amateur rehearsals. The several bath-houses along the shore 
of the lake were daily patronized by the men, and everywhere 
and at all times the presence of soldiers was felt. They at- 
tended church services in a body every Sunday, and filled the 
restaurants every night in the week. While the nights were 
not disturbed by their marching, after the first week or ten 
days, yet scarcely an hour in the day went by but some body 
of infantry or cavalry passed the hotel where I stayed, shut in 
for six weeks. But one guest at the hotel spoke English. 
This one, a German, but holding the ofifice in Switzerland of 
Consul-General for the Republics of Honduras and Nicaragua, 
daily gave me bits of news — just bits, all he could though. 
Really, for a time I knew less of the progress of the war than 
most Americans at home. For weeks, at all the news stands, 
the last edition of any newspaper printed in English was 
August 1st. The world seemed to have come to an end on that 
date, the newspaper world at least. 

By the middle of September, now that travel in the direc- 
tion of Egypt or farther east was likely to prove uncongenial, 
I began looking about in other directions. By applying to the 

27 



German Consul at Zurich, Switzerland, I found I could travel, 
days, up through Germany to Amsterdam, Holland, where a 
line of steamers made regular sailings for Buenos Aires, Ar- 
gentine, connecting by rail with a line of steamers at Val- 
paraiso, Chile, for Panama and home. So the latter part of 
September I left Lucerne. 

On leaving the railroad station at Zurich, I asked a traffic 
policeman out on the public square where the office of the 
American Consul was, by showing him the address on a piece 
of paper. Overhearing the conversation, carried on largely 
by the big policeman, a well-dressed, slight-built woman of 
say thirty-five stepped up to me and said : 

"I will go with you if you wish. I have time." 

It took an hour and a half of her time. She went with 
me to the American Consulate first ; then to the German Con- 
sul and finally to the Consul of the Netherlands. The clerk 
at this last consulate prayed to be excused from affixing the 
seal to my passport as the Consul himself had, that day, mar- 
ried a wife and therefore could not come to the office. In the 
end, this did not matter. When we had made the rounds 
once and found a second trip to the American Consul was 
necessary, my good guide, after I had somewhat gently sug- 
gested paying for her services, really valuable to me, replied 
frankly : 

"I am very glad to do it. If I were a stranger here I 
should be glad if some one would do the same for me. The 
American Consulation you now know, so I bid you goodbye." 

She has my name and address, of course, for she saw my 
passport. I also have hers. 

At the American Consulate not only did they certify to the 
fact that my passport was good, but an added endorsement 
declared my physical condition was all right. In big type 
the words "Good Gut" verified as to that. Some tell me these 
words merely stated, both in the English and in the German 
language, that the passport was good, but the other interpre- 
tation is equally true and a fact much more widely known. 
Clearly, the intent of the added endorsement was that the 
Germans, in passing through their country, should know me 
even as also I am known. 

In southern Germany little was in evidence from the car 
window to indicate the nation was in a life and death struggle, 
but after leaving Stuttgart, on the way to Frankfort and Co- 
logne, things were very different. In the afternoon of the 
second day a German soldier sat down in the seat with me 
and, for a time before leaving the train, talked in his own 
language with some German-Americans sitting opposite us. 
He had been wounded in the arm in a battle in France, but 
was on his way back to the front. When he left the train I 



28 



asked those sitting opposite what he had told them of his ex- 
perience. One answered : 

"He said he didn't want to say much with that Frenchman 
sitting next to him." 

The second night I stopped at Cologne. The stop, as at 
Stuttgart the night before, was imperative. No trains ran long 
after dark. Just why this was so I did not learn, except that 
the discontinuance of the night service was a military necessity 
or precaution. 

At the American Consulate at Cologne, where I went to 
get my passport again fixed up, I happened to mention the fact 
that I lacked two cents of enough German money to get my 
valise out of the parcel room at the railroad station, where 
I had left it an hour or two before. My ticket through to 
Amsterdam had taken a little more of German money than I 
had figured on. 

"Why don't you take advantage of the emergency fund 
we have here? How many marks do you want?" inquired the 
clerk in a manner that indicated the fund was a generous one. 
I told him two marks (fifty cents) would be ample, but upon 
his suggesting an amount several times that I compromised 
on four. 

"Think of a lawyer from Hartford, Connecticut," said he 
to the rest of the office force, "applying here for only four 
marks." They laughed at the fact and so did I, that now for 
the first time during the trip the absence of just two cents in 
my pocket had left me stranded. 

The trip from Cologne to Amsterdam necessitated my 
leaving the train at the frontier, crossing by trolley into Hol- 
land and taking another train for Amsterdam. But for the 
considerate attention of both German and Dutch fellow pas- 
sengers, the trip would have easily been full of annoyance, to 
say the least. As it was, it is recalled with pleasure. 

To find out which would be the best of several trains, I 
went to the information bureau near the Cologne railroad 
station. There, in English, was explained to me the difficul- 
ties of the different routes, but to assist me the obliging clerk 
wrote out an itinerary. He was mighty good to me — that is, 
he meant to be. 

At Cleve, near the frontier, I left the train and followed 
others, myself in the care of a Dutch passenger to whom I had 
been transferred by a German passenger, who had to leave the 
train before we reached Cleve. Both these guardians of mine 
spoke English. Both looked out for me, as are emigrants 
who travel with nothing but a tag to tell. My itinerary gave 
me twelve minutes to get from Cleve, Germany, to Nijmegen, 
Holland, to leave one train and catch the next. The informa- 
tion man said I could do it all right; and I did, but not on 
schedule time. The distance was twelve miles. To do that 

29 



in twelve minutes is going some, even for a line that stops 
for passengers on the way, as this did. Besides, the trip was 
broken at two points by a change of trolleys and a walk of half 
a mile, during which short stops were made to allow the Ger- 
man and the Dutch custom officers to examine the baggage 
and passports of passengers. But I caught the next train — 
that is, the next train I could catch, which was four hours 
later. 

This was a through train, my schedule said, to Amster- 
dam. It left at eight in the evening. Whether it ever got 
through I cannot tell ; but I do know that about thirty minutes 
later the train stopped at a small station. Then, without a 
word, everybody got out, crossed over to some unlighted cars 
on a side track, climbed in and sat down in the dark. Every- 
body finally included me, but, unlike the other passengers, I 
didn't have to sit down to be in the dark. Why they left me 
in the other car alone I could not understand. But I followed 
after and clave unto them ; whither they went I went ; their 
train was my train ; their car, my car. In this I was stead- 
fastly minded. In time, due time I suppose, an engine backed 
up to our train, the lights were turned on and on we went. 
Between eleven and twelve the train stopped again, this time 
at a big station. During the interim between stops I had put 
myself under the care of another Dutchman, so that now all 
I had to do was to follow him down a long platform, up over 
a bridge across half a dozen tracks and down along to another 
station. Then he placed me up against the building, intimated 
that I had better not wander away and excused himself for half 
an hour, when another train would be made up, he said. I 
minded him, about not running away. 

Towards midnight, when I had about made up my mind 
to make the best of it for the night, the train was made up 
and reached Amsterdam two hours later. 

I was the last of a crowd of passengers to walk down the 
long platform, and just as I reached the end an officer singled 
me out and tapping me on the arm, said quietly, in good Eng- 
lish : 

"Come this way, please." 

This time I thought surely I was pinched. But, I didn't 
try to argue the case. It was too late ; the time was too brief 
to submit one. So I followed the officer up a flight of stairs, 
without a word. 

"You are an Englishman," he said, turning slightly to- 
wards me. * 

This was the third time within a few weeks that I had 
been complimented on my looks. It could not be my speech 
that had, apparently, betrayed me this time, for I had said 
nothing. But the compliment of being first taken for an 
Italian, then a Frenchman, and now an Englishman, the com- 



pliment I put it by thrice, every time gentler than other. 

"No," I replied, somewhat confidently, "I am an Ameri- 
can." 

"Well, come this way, please." Now I was in for it. 
Neither race, color nor the cordy condition of my legs could 
save me. No matter what I had heretofore been taken for, 
this time I was to be taken in. Opening a door near the top 
of the stairs, the officer showed me into a large, well-lighted 
room, where were half a dozen clerks, men and women, at 
work at two o'clock in the morning. 

"Your passport, please !"' That was found to be all right. 

"Have you any money?" I had about thirty cents in Ger- 
man money, but plenty of travelers checks, payable in Am- 
sterdam. These I also showed him. 

"Do you know of any hotel in Amsterdam?" I did not 
then know there was a Dom Hotel in the city, but there is. 
By thus spelling the name of this hotel as they pronounce it, 
I have avoided the use of the word "Dam," which every one 
feels like avoiding who stays in Amsterdam long. But that 
night, or rather that morning, a hotel by any other name would 
have meant the same to me, mouth the name as you may. 
I intimated as much to the officer. 

He first Wrote the address of a hotel on a piece of paper 
and started to hand it to me, but recalling the fact that this 
was my first visit, and that any address by itself would be of 
little use to me, the officer turned to a clerk and said some- 
thing. The clerk at once put on his coat and hat, and the 
officer shook me by the hand and said, "Good night." The 
clerk took me down-stairs and across the square over to the 
police station. There he told the police sergeant something 
about me — I don't know what — shook me by the hand and 
said something that sounded like "Good night." The sergeant 
then led me some half a dozen blocks through the well-lighted 
but then lifeless town, till he found the patrolman. The 
patrolman was thereupon told all about me, I presume, from 
my youth up. You see, the officer had carefully read my pass- 
port over and this document gave me away in many instances 
it had no business to, even to providing lines for the names 
and birth of seven children I swore I never had. So you see, 
my reputation, like the firecracker in the famous squib case, 
was being tossed along from mouth to mouth till it was likely 
to explode and deny me admission anywhere. But the ser- 
geant finally shook me by the hand and said something, and 
then the patrolman took me in tow. Two blocks farther along 
one of the canals the name of the hotel shown out in the dark- 
ness, and the patrolman motioned me to go up and ring the 
bell. This I did and soon a head appeared at a third story 
window. The patrolman thereupon told the head another 
story about me, shook hands and went back to his beat. The 

31 



head disappeared, the front door opened, and I beat it for bed 
in as comfortable a room as need be. 

Was not this Dutch system neighborly to a stranger, to 
any stranger like me? I tell you, when I recall the kindness 
shown me many year ago on one of my early bicycle trips by 
a poor Belgian cobbler, poor in pennies but rich in hospitality, 
when I think of the more than friendly conduct towards me 
of a German student at Heidelberg, when I remember the 
similar cases of kindness of which I was the recipient on that 
same trip, both in Italy and in France as well as in England, 
I feel that they then were and still are my neighbors. And 
if you could have met them as I have in their homes, you 
would surely feel as I do, that they were all your neighbors, 
our neighbors. 

But what did I see of the war? The morning I left Stutt- 
gart I saw but few soldiers, most of them convalescent ap- 
parently, as they came and went at the different stations. But 
at Frankfort I saw hundreds, possibly thousands of them, as 
the trains came to a stop in the big station. I did not try to 
count them ; I was in no mood to count. Some of them with 
their arms in slings, others with their jaws done up, many 
with bandages about their heads, all came slowly down the 
long platforms towards the large waiting rooms reserved sole- 
ly for them. Sometimes a fellow with one leg big with band- 
ages would get his good arms about the necks of two of his 
comrades who had good legs but arms of little use just then, 
and in column of threes, so to speak, they moved along, the 
two on the sides acting as human crutches for the one in the 
middle. Wheeled stretchers were pushed along the platforms 
to meet every train. They went empty, but always came 
back loaded. Red Cross men were everywhere, sometimes 
with hand stretchers, but always busy, meeting every train and 
coming back with their burden. The soldiers wore fatigue 
uniforms, stained in spots with something dark and dirty 
looking, but the men, and most of them were young, all were 
so pale, with no blood at all in their young faces. They had 
lost it somewhere. 

I sat down on a bench outside the waiting room to wait 
for the train for Cologne, and for three hours there was no let- 
up in the stream that moved slowly by me. When it began, 
I don't know. When it stopped, if it has yet stopped, I don't 
know. Where the stream started, where the source was, I 
don't know either, but this was a few days after the Battle of 
Marne, when the Germans were pushed back from Paris and 
almost out of France. Perhaps that was the source. 

At Cologne, the next morning, the wounded were coming 
from the west and going east by trainloads. The first week 
in August, I was told, men went through this big Cologne 
station, train after train, day and night, for six days, and the 

32 



crowd in the streets below cheered them on as they yelled 
back till their throats were raw, from the viaduct above, five 
hundred thousand of them all going west. Now they 
were coming back, a few weeks later, some of them, and 
not a cheer did I hear, either from the street below 
or the train above. No one felt like cheering this trip. 
I counted the cars in one train. There were forty, most 
of them freight cars, box cars with straw covering the floors 
of the cars. The straw, too, was covered, covered with men 
all shot up. Most of them were so shot up they could not 
stand, but remained lying flat on the straw, as the train went 
slowly by. A few stood at the side doors of the cars, holding 
themselves up on crutches. Occasionally, from the windows 
of the few passenger cars, a head was thrust out, but no one 
waved a hand at it. The head was generally wound round 
with white cloths, scarcely more white than the face the cloths 
partially concealed. I went up-stairs to the train platform. 
The long restaurant had been cleared out of all the counters 
and shelves, and the floor was completely covered with mat- 
tresses, two rows of them going half the length of the long 
station. None of the mattresses were occupied just then, 
but they had been. I went down-stairs into the basement, 
into a fourth-class waiting room, to eat some luncheon. All 
the other waiting rooms, as at Frankfort, were reserved. Two 
fellows, once fine looking, sat down at the table close to me. 
They both wore the fatigue uniform and had the same blood- 
less faces. The one next to me sat so close I could have put 
my arms around his neck, — and I would if I could have done 
him any good, for he was in pain. His head had been hurt, 
somewhere, somehow, for it was done up in white. He was 
doing his best to hold his head up, as a soldier should, but it 
kept continually sinking lower and lower till, after straighten- 
ing up again and again, he finally gave up and let his head go 
down flat on the table in front, turning his face away from me 
so I would not see what he suffered. He was not the only one 
that was suffering at that table. 

I went over to get a travelers check cashed at a bank 
near by. 

"We cash no checks here issued by any English company," 
said the cashier with emphasis, the emphasis increasing as he 
proceeded. "We shall have no money transactions with them. 
When the Russians first began to threaten us we did not feel 
so bitterly towards France nor England, and if England had 
kept out it would be so now. But now — and his teeth became 
almost set, — now we have some twenty thousand English 
prisoners. These we shall treat all right. But from this time 
on we shall take no more English prisoners. We shall take 
no more English prisoners." His rasping voice and set teeth 
I can still hear and see. 

33 



Don't think because I may have seen a Httle blood in 
Germany, that I have now^ changed my views about w^ar. I 
did not see any blood in Germany. Those young men did not 
have any blood left in them, apparently. They had left it all 
in some other country. No, it is not blood that has upset me. 

You know, or those who know me best know, that as a boy, 
during the civil war, I was full of the military spirit that boys 
of my age usually are ; you know that when I became older I 
served seven years in the National Guard ; you know that when 
the Spanish-American war broke out I tried to get as near the 
firing line as I could, but no Connecticut troops got very near ; 
you know now, perhaps for the first time, that when in the 
spring of 1914 war with Mexico seemed near, I tried to get 
them to take me in any capacity, but they had no use for a fel- 
low over sixty, and you know, — and this pulls at my heart- 
strings the hardest — you know that for years I have preached 
to that class of boys, first in the Sunday School and now that 
they have grown to manhood, a hundred of them or more, — I 
have always urged those chums of mine if our country ever 
went to war, to go. So strongly did I urge them that, at the 
time I started in 1914, four of them went into the army and 
navy. But I am wrong; and I have been wrong all my life. 

Do not misunderstand me. It is a great thing when your 
home is attacked, to defend it; when your country is in peril, 
to fight for it, even to giving your life for it. 

But there is a better service, a higher service, a nobler ser- 
vice you can perform, and that is to serve your God. But you 
cannot serve your God and, at the same time, go out and kill 
your neighbor, as they are doing in Europe. It can't be right 
to do so. It can't be possible that Almighty God has brought 
the human race up to its present state of civilization only to 
have it now commit suicide. 

Can you grasp, with your imagination even, what is being 
done over there? I saw a little, just a little, and have tried 
to make you see just a little of what I saw. But does this 
help us to grasp it? Suppose a rapid fire gun was set up on 
the main street of our town or city, and a thousand men a 
day were shot down and piled up in a heap. Possibly we 
might grasp the magnitude of such a sight, horrible as it might 
seem. But over there, instead of one thousand men a day, 
every hour of the twenty-four of every day since the first day of 
last August, one thousand men have been laid low. Could their 
bodies be piled up in one heap, the point of the pyramid would 
be higher than the dome of the Connecticut State Capitol twice 
over. The Washington monument could not overshadow nor 
hide the dead face of the young man at the top. What a 
pitiable pyramid has already been raised to heaven, and to 
furnish warm material for the raising, how many homes of the 
human soul have been broken down and torn apart — homes 

34 



each one more precious than any cathedral of cold stone. 

And then the manner of the killing! Experts in the art 
have written much and wrought little along the line of in- 
creased tenderness in modern methods of killing human beings. 
The new smaller-sized, sharp-nosed bullets, sent with force 
sufificient to penetrate and pass through the bodies of two or 
three men in succession, nevertheless will make so slight an 
opening that the wound will close and heal at the first inten- 
tion. These experts claim they desire only to disable, not to 
kill. Likewise, shells that formerly tore men limb from limb 
are now tenderly filled with such wonderful chemicals that the 
explosive gases will render the man unconscious before his 
arms and legs can be torn off. 

But when put to the test, how has the science of slaughter- 
ing human beings worked out? The fact is, the fighters over 
there, almost to a man, have gone back to the bayonet ; have 
come together in personal encounter when animal courage 
alone counts ; when eyes with the hate of hell in them meet, 
and cold steel is wet with warm blood. And when the jabbing 
and slashing and smashing stops, a Chicago slaughterhouse 
sticker would blush to acknowledge the bungling mutilations 
were the result of his handiwork. No, the Chicago system of 
killing has not been improved upon over there ; and the pity 
of it is, while the cutter leaves the carcass fit for the market, 
the sticker over there, after his work is done, is not left fit 
to meet his Maker. 

And then the methods of the fighter ! In the pursuit of 
his profession, he has come to believe as his gospel, in order 
to insure the permanence and peace of his people throughout 
the land, he must plough into it a million or so of young men, 
plough them in in trenches as the farmer does his manure, 
when he seeks a quick return for his labor. But there is this 
difference. The farmer seeks to build up material for the 
homes of spiritual beings, while the fighter tears to pieces the 
homes the spiritual beings have built up. The farmer seeks a 
quick return from dead matter ; the fighter returns the quick 
to the dead. One is evolution ; the other, dissolution. One 
leads to life ; the other leads, must lead, to death, the death 
of the nation. No nation can long survive that makes manure 
of its young men. True it is that all help to fill a trench, 
sooner or later, but evolution teaches that the highest develop- 
ment alone is possible only when a long period of infancy and 
maternity precedes it. A nation that allows but twenty years 
for its young men to serve their God and their fellow men is 
forcing them to fast living. No nation can long survive whose 
individual members are compelled to make the short circuit 
from dust to dust in one score of years. Irrigating the land 
with infant blood never can nourish. 

And then the guilt of the people themselves ! No man 

35 



can hold himself guiltless who aids and abets his country for 
years, in preparing to do just what is being done over there. 
In time of peace, prepare for war and you will get just what 
you have prepared yourself for. They did over there, and we 
will over here. No man can fill his hip pockets with 
loaded revolvers and start out with a shotgun on one 
shoulder and a chip on the other, and be looked upon by his 
neighbors as a man of peace ; a man of peace does not look 
like that. He is out looking for fight, and he will generally 
get what he is looking for. They did over there, and we will 
over here. But, you say, a man may do one thing and intend 
something very different. The man who set a spring gun at his 
front gate intended to get a burglar. He got his innocent neigh- 
bor instead, and a term in state prison besides. The man was 
held to have intended the ordinary and natural result of his 
act, which was to get some one. He did get some one. Battle- 
ships are ordinarily and naturally used to sink other battle- 
ships with the men on them. When built, they are intended 
to be used in that way, and the people who vote to build them 
intend to have them used in that way, to sink other battle- 
ships with the men on them. This is the intention of the 
people over there, arid the intention of the people over here. 
The guilt of the individual voter cannot therefore be cast off 
upon his government, when for years he has supported his 
government in its intent to do that very thing. You say a 
man may put up a sign, "No Trespassing," and yet have no 
intention of prosecuting his neighbors. True it is, and it is 
also true that the neighbors are presumed to know the law 
without any sign being stuck under their noses. If no prose- 
cution is intended, why make the threat to prosecute? In 
my case, I have hitherto regularly voted to keep up the sign, 
to build bigger battleships and heavier coast defenses, and to 
maintain a larger standing army. The sign, to be sure, during 
my term as a voter has cost some fifteen billions of dollars, 
just to maintain a threatening sign. But did maintaining that 
sign help us to maintain peace? It did not over there; it will 
not over here. 

And then the gospel of strength, a gospel so weak ! The 
monsters in all ages of the earth, man or mastodon, have 
failed to long survive. Monstrous as many were, they do not 
size up to the law of the survival of the fittest. If strength, 
even as alleged, instead of fitness, were the rule of the law of 
evolution, still would the strong have disappeared. The swim- 
ming and the flying reptiles, the super-dreadnaughts and the 
dirigibles of their time, the mighty mastodon, the immense 
cave-bear, all have ceased to exist and would not now be 
known to have ever existed but for their scattered and battered 
bones. These giants have gone, but the ant, the cooperative 
and socialistic ant, contemporaneous with many of the mon- 

36 



sters mentioned, still survives to multiply and inhabit a large 
portion of the earth. Primitive man was brought in sharp 
and deadly competition with species vastly his superior in 
strength, but his cunning combinations, rather than the com- 
bined strength of his species, enabled him to outlive them. 
In the past the determining factors have been, not strength, 
but combination, cooperation and union, these three; and in 
the future, the greatest will be union. 

But what of the future? The past points out the path 
for the future. The same rule of reason that brought about 
the disarmament of the individual in the past will bring about 
disarmament of the nations in the future. Primitive man, 
hiding in the hollow of a tree or the recesses of a cave, went 
armed. His normal environment recjuired it. Lurking ene- 
mies in the human race and ferocious and powerful beasts were 
ever appearing in his path. His survival depended upon the 
added strength his weapon gave him. But in time the beasts 
disappeared from his path and the enemies in his own or out- 
side tribes made fewer attempts on his life, as better public 
protection was secured. Still many men went armed. While 
their lives were no longer in danger, yet their honor, they 
thought, was likely to be assailed at any time, and they must 
be allowed to defend that at all hazards. So it has come about 
that some men have gone armed till within very recent years. 
But experience has taught that the carrying of a weapon, 
concealed or otherwise, has been the cause of, rather than a 
protection against, assaults upon that somewhat vague com- 
modity, a man's honor. Hence the individual has been dis- 
armed. The result is, greater safety to the individual in his 
normal surroundings and more peaceful conditions in the com- 
munity. The honor so highly prized has also sufifered fewer 
assaults. 

But here are some fifty sovereign nations, fully armed, 
each claiming the right to inhabit more or less of the earth, 
and, while not the normal condition, wars ensue. What did 
primitive man do when an attack was made upon his tree or 
cave? Pie combined with others, just as the warring nations 
have done. Furthermore, he relinquished certain of his 
sovereign rights in the tree or cave, just as the allies have 
begun to relinquish certain rights. They have relinquished 
the right to conclude terms of peace independent of each 
other. In time, as these little family groups and groups of 
families grew and tribes arose, unanimity continued to exist 
in regard to the enforcement of tribal rights and the rights 
of individual members of each tribe against other tribes or the 
individual members of other tribes. But discord did not cease 
within the tribe. Each member continued to enforce what he 
alone considered to be his individual or private rights, till it was 
agreed that certain members of the tribe should be selected 

37 



to settle these local disputes. Hence, constables, sheriffs, po- 
licemen, and police courts arose and are still found somewhat 
necessary. Here again each individual relinquished certain 
rights, and thereafter was not allowed to take the law into his 
own hands. A superior was selected, which the inferior was 
compelled to obey. The nations still take their home-made 
law into their own hands and try to enforce it against other 
nations in their homes. But in the case of the individual, 
placing the enforcement of his private rights in the hands of 
others has resulted in less disorder in the community. Plac- 
ing the enforcement of national rights in the hands of a new 
nation to be created will result in less killing. The process 
or growth in government, thus briefly outlined so far as it 
relates to the individual, when adopted by the nations of the 
earth will result in like peace and good will in the world at 
large. At each step the individual relinquished certain rights ; 
at each step the nations must go and do likewise. 

But nations, just as the individual was slow to relinquish 
the right to defend his honor, are disinclined to give up any 
right that may effect their sovereignty, their national honor. 
A powerful nation, for instance, is loath to leave to others the 
settlement of a dispute with a weak nation, particularly if the 
weak nation is looked upon as having no rights which the 
powerful nati(Mi is bound to respect. This trait in human na- 
ture is sonjetimes discernible in the individual as well. No 
nation has yet consented to such a plan, you say. Let us see. 

History tells us that in the year 1781, on the North Ameri- 
can continent, thirteen weak little nations, weak but still hav- 
ing within themselves all the essentials of sovereignty, adopted 
articles of confederation. In these articles of confederation, 
however, each state still clung to its individual sovereignty ; 
each state retained the right to recall its members of congress 
at will, to issue its own currency without limit. The con- 
federation was given no power or authority to wage war, to 
coin money, to collect taxes. It grew weaker and weaker. 
Four states never paid one cent into the treasury of the con- 
federation and only one. New York, ever paid all that became 
due. They taxed imports from foreign countries and from 
sister states alike, and with one exception, refused to turn into 
the confederation the money collected from foreign imports. 
Disputes between states were frequent, and rebellious blood 
was shed. These conditions continued and grew worse till 
the different states, or rather, individuals from them, willing 
finally to relinquish certain sovereign rights in order to be 
protected from each other as well as from the outside world, 
came together in 1787, adopted a constitution and created a 
new nation, the United States of America. The plan then 
adopted still survives. 

Bvit the disarmament of nations, it is claimed, would never 

38 



do. While in the case of the individual it is conceded the 
result has been for the public good, yet a nation disarmed 
would be the victim of assaults incessantly. To prevent these 
assaults big standing armies and powerful navies are neces- 
sary. But have they prevented war? Has not the very pres- 
ence of large bodies of armed men and great navies been the 
cause of, rather than a protection, against war? The present 
war was not prevented by the presence of the largest standing 
armies and the greatest navies the world ever saw. Being 
prepared did not prevent this war. On the other hand, two of 
the greatest nations on earth, each without a standing army 
worthy of the name and with a frontier three thousand miles in 
extent between them, entirely unfortified and totally unpre- 
pared, have lived at peace with each other for more than one 
hundred years. 

But disarmament, to be wise must be just, must be uni- 
versal'. To compel the conquered nation alone to disarm 
would be neither wise nor just. The conquerors also must 
disarm. To whom, then, must the disarmed nations look for 
protection in their rights? To the new sovereign, the new 
nation to be created. 

No individual, no nation, in the growth of human govern- 
ment, has been compelled to relinquish a right or the right to 
enforce a right without some agency being created to protect 
the individual and the nation from encroachments. There- 
fore, a new sovereign must be created with authority and, 
what is of still more vital importance, power to protect the dis- 
armed nations. It must have, first, authority to command 
and, second, power to compel obedience. The sentence of a 
police court would have little force or efifect, except for the 
power behind it to compel obedience. Like the judgment of 
a court of arbitration, nullification would follow. 

The authority, then, will come from the written constitu- 
tion creating the new sovereign. From what source, then, 
will come the power? From the discarded implements of 
war, ships manned by men and armies composed of men ap- 
pointed by and responsible solely to the new sovereign, to 
whom their only oath of allegiance binds them. If a nation 
is sincerely in favor of universal peace, what matters it if 
some power outside of itself fully protects and enforces its 
rights? But it may be said, the more powerful nations, at 
greater expense, will have more implements to discard and 
therefore will be compelled to sufifer more loss. What matters 
it, if their rights thereafter are fully protected and enforced? 
The whole object of the great expense did not pass one jot or 
tittle beyond this, if their claims hitherto have been based upon 
the truth. They have, with wonderful unanimity, always and 
everywhere claimed no ambition beyond the full protection and 
enforcement of their own rights. 

39 



Finally, how shall the body of men be selected who shall 
be vested with the authority to draw up the constitution and 
enact the laws under which the new sovereign must act? Each 
nation willing to relinquish certain rights and come under 
the protection of the new sovereign must have at least one 
representative. A casual glance at the nations of the world, 
in case all came in, will suggest a body of men representing 
nations, one third designated as first-class powers and two 
thirds designated as second-class powers. The smaller nations 
would, therefore, control the body. In case the legislative 
branch of the new sovereign should be composed of two bodies 
instead of one, then, in all fairness, if the smaller nations had an 
equal representation in one body, the larger nations should be 
represented in the other body according to population ? This, 
it may be said, might result in a deadlock. The same opinions 
were entertained regarding the formation of the legislative 
branch of the United States of America, but during the one 
hundred and twenty-five years of its existence no serious dead- 
lock has occurred. And the fear of a possible deadlock is far 
to be preferred to the certainty of the present death-struggle. 
Still more to be preferred is the adoption of a plan that has, 
though once put to a severe test, worked successfully for more 
than a century, and never did more for the welfare of the 
people living under it than it is doing today. In case the allies 
are finally able to fix the terms of peace, it is understood these 
terms will include compulsory disarmament on the part of the 
one and voluntary disarmament on the part of the other. In 
this general disarmament, the United States should be ready 
to unite. To help in this union is the moving motive of this 
little story of a walking trip through Europe in lOlA. 



40 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 913 555 3 



